Fire protection uneven

LI's firehouses are not always in the right spot

BY ELIZABETH MOORE | STAFF WRITER

November 14, 2005

Article tools

E-mail

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Fark
- Google
- Newsvine
- Reddit
- Yahoo

Long Island has an abundance of firehouses, but they are not always where they're most needed.

Stewart Manor's firehouse protects an area so small, it doesn't include the homes across the street. Its area along the Nassau-Queens border is so thick with fire departments that a burning home on some streets there could have pumpers from 13 different firehouses at the curb within three minutes if need be.

But blazes in the $2 million Gold Coast homes on Laurel Hollow's Ridge Road have an average of 12 minutes to burn unchecked before firefighters can race from their nearest station, 41/2 miles away.

Overall, there are about twice as many firehouses as called for under national insurance standards, a Newsday computer analysis found.

The imbalance is most pronounced in Nassau County. Almost 60 percent of the residents there have three or more fire stations within the 11/2-mile drive of their homes recommended in the standards -- and 6 percent of residents have none within that distance.

While just 14 percent of Suffolk County residents have three or more stations within range, the analysis found, many residents in the Babylon and Patchogue areas have anywhere from five to seven firehouses that close.

And 19 percent of the county's population has no fire station within 11/2 miles, including the rural East End and wealthy North Shore communities such as Lloyd Harbor.

'Does it really make sense?'

In the areas that have more than enough firehouses, though, boundaries between agencies' territories mean that residents may not get the benefit of that abundance, waiting for an engine from their home department even though another department's firehouse may be closer.

"You have to ask yourself, does it really make sense to maintain all this extra equipment and real estate?" asks Stewart Manor Mayor Joseph Troiano. "Do we need all these firehouses?"

If you plot the location of Nassau's 176 firehouses on a map, a clump of dots almost obscures Merrick Road near Lynbrook and Rockville Centre, and another cluster blooms in the Floral Park area. But much of northern Oyster Bay Town, the tony part, is blank.

People in Upper Brookville and East Norwich are among the 6 percent of Nassau's residents who have no firehouses within a 1 1/2-mile drive.

On the other hand, Lynbrook, a village of just two square miles, has six firehouses, and neighboring Rockville Centre has another six.

If a fire broke out near the corner of South Park Avenue and Riverside Drive near the border between the two villages, at least 17 fire stations, including seven from other departments, are within the 11/2 miles called for in insurance industry standards.

Once-coveted memberships

"The public loves it," said Lynbrook Mayor Eugene Scarpato. "Why would we cut one out when they're volunteers? They don't get paid, other than the little perks that they get. Why would we want to cut that? Well, you might say we could do without one. I don't know. I've never tried. I wouldn't try it and why should I?"

One explanation volunteers offer for the imbalance is that wealthier areas are so thinly populated that there is limited value in building fire stations there.

Where the volunteers were

Another reason, they acknowledge, is that many firehouses were built where the volunteers were.

Volunteer memberships were once so coveted in southern Nassau that would-be firefighters incorporated new companies one after the other, jockeying for territories to serve, explained former Lynbrook Chief Michael Chiaramonte, a national authority on retaining volunteers.